Fang of a Basilisk
by AfraidOfFalling
Summary: Revised!  "Kill me like you killed him, you coward." Whoever said that words could not hurt? Reflections of Severus Snape following a few particularly stressful events.


**I don't own anything, except a desire to write about an awesome character and a quote, a basic understanding of the English language, a computer with internet access, a keyboard...well, you get the picture, right?**

**Thanks for finding and helping me correct some errors in the original version! = )**

**Enjoy!**

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Fang of a Basilisk

~.~.~.~

He stumbled through the doorway and collapsed upon the bed, entirely exhausted, utterly spent. He wanted rest—sweet, oblivious sleep—an escape—freedom from the world. But his conscious mind could not calm down. The scenes of the past few hours raced each other through his mind incessantly: Dumbledore falling, the duel with Potter, the reaction of the Dark Lord, the terror and agony and paralyzing loneliness that was clogging his lungs. How had so much occurred in so short a time? He closed his eyes, his face pale and drawn, and tried to forget.

But his brain did not cooperate. Instead the face of Harry Potter lodged itself in front of his eyes. The boy's countenance was filled with pure hatred—not tempered by fear, and too early since Dumbledore's death to be diluted with grief. The visage in his mind spoke, and he winced as it snarled again a sentence he did not wish to hear.

"_Kill me like you killed him, you coward."_

He let out a low cry before breaking down completely and weeping freely. The pain was too great, too all-consuming, too overwhelming—the fang of a basilisk piercing his heart; its toxins spreading incorrigibly through his very soul.

"_Kill me like you killed him, you coward."_

He remembered arriving at the scene in the tower, viewing the distress on Draco's face that mirrored so perfectly his own emotions. He remembered how his eyes were drawn inevitably to Dumbledore, who leaned weakly against the tower's battlements—pallid, yet calm—his blue eyes peering piercingly into Snape's face—pleading for Severus to follow through with his promise. He remembered raising his wand, hating it, hating the greenish light of the Dark Mark glowing above them, hating the rank smell of the enthusiastic and bloodthirsty werewolf standing nearby, hating Dumbledore for what he had asked Snape to do, and most of all hating himself for resolving to do it. He remembered leveling the wand at Dumbledore's chest—wholly repulsed by the spell he was about to utter and by what would result from a mere two words. He remembered opening his mouth and forcing out those words, "_Avada Kedavra,_" and the sickening way the poison-green rays hit Dumbledore's body and caused him to careen over the ramparts and fall from view.

"_Kill me like you killed him, you coward."_

The boy's face floated in his mind, flickering red with the fire of Hagrid's burning hut. Lily's eyes glared out of Potter's face, suffused with loathing. The child, the one thing in the world that had stopped him from committing suicide all those torturous years ago—for the sole purpose of protecting him—that very child of Lily's screamed at Snape to end his life. And to make everything worse—unbearably worse—Severus _would_—would one day follow a final instruction from his master that would send Lily's son to the slaughter: more lifeblood—and not just any, but that blood which was most precious to him—would stain his calloused hands.

"_Kill me like you killed him, you coward."_

The fiery redness of the memory brought back another: the Dark Lord's scarlet eyes glittered as Snape stood before him. A smile stretched across his lipless mouth, and he laughed a laugh that chilled the hearts of everyone within hearing, and Snape struggled to keep his face blank—struggled to force down the emotions that threatened to betray him and ruin all.

"_Kill me like you killed him, you coward."_

Whether Potter had changed the subject back to Dumbledore or really did mean to accuse him of murdering James Potter, Severus did not know, but he could not help but feel that it was the latter. He did not understand how Potter could possibly know what role Snape had played in the Potters' deaths, but the accusation nonetheless struck him like the Cruciatus—no, worse—for if he had killed James Potter, he had also killed Lily. He had wiped from the face of the earth both the only person he had ever fully loved and the only person who had ever cared for him. As much as he tried to make himself blame the Dark Lord, or Sirius Black, or Peter Pettigrew, or even Harry Potter, the guilt flooded through him, tasting like bile, for he was convinced in his heart that he was as responsible for her death as if he had cast the Killing Curse upon her himself. "Lily," he agonized silently, for he did not have the breath now even to whisper.

"_Kill me like you killed him, you coward."_

Soon, the Dark Lord would likely order him to ransack the Order's headquarters, and he would throw open the door to number twelve, Grimmauld Place, carelessly blasting aside whatever phantom image or other horror his allies had placed there for him and stalking into the dwelling as if it belonged to him. He would enter rooms and throw open doors and drawers and rifle mercilessly through any and all papers, fulfilling the Dark Lord's orders, but finding nothing his "master" would find useful. She had been the mutt's friend, he knew: might he recognize her miracle handwriting on a paper that by chance would reach his hands? Could there be a photo that captured the beauty of the angel who had long since escaped Earth? His throat constricted and is heart skipped as he ceased his musings to remember the melody of her voice and dwell upon a far away memory of her laughing face.

"_Kill me like you killed him, you coward."_

_Coward—_Of course. He had followed the orders of the only decent man that trusted him by appearing to murder him, making himself utterly alone in a more-than-hostile world, trusting only that somehow the path he was following was all for the Greater Good. Cowardly? Hardly. But he could not laugh at the word, sneer, "You're wrong, Potter," because Potter was _not_ wrong. Cowardice it was that caused Severus to ally himself with aspiring Death Eaters at school and alienate himself from his only true friend. Cowardice it was that caused Severus to join the Dark Lord, to serve him faithfully until the only thing that mattered to him was threatened. Cowardice it was that caused Severus to bully his students into terrified submission year after year. Cowardice it was that caused Severus to retaliate at Harry Potter for what the boy's father had done. He'd had his brave moments, to be sure, but Severus knew himself to be a coward, and Truth stung worse than lies.

"_Kill me like you killed him, you coward."_

Potter hated him, completely and wholeheartedly (if the whole of a heart can truly hate). But even Potter did not hate Snape as much as Snape despised himself. Nothing could be worse than the prison of his own thoughts and memories: Snape was his own dementor.

"_Kill me like you killed him, you coward."_

He wept out all his emotion, bidding it to sink away from him into the bed sheets or the walls; he wept until he was nothing more than a hollow shell of a human. And then he straightened and slid his mask of indifference over his face, and he played the part that Dumbledore had mapped out for him, and he acted it flawlessly.

~.~.~.~

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